A Corner of the Universe
by x.Lemon.Tea.x
Summary: Across the lands, not faraway, he gave her his heart to take.  Now, in a world filled with dreams, childish desires, and growing up, Denzel ponders his past decisions.  Denzel/Moogle Girl


Disclaimer: Final Fnatasy VII does not belong to me. Neither does Advent Children nor anything related to the Final Fantasy franchise.

Enjoy.

* * *

A Corner of the Universe

/

_He was young back then._

He was a boy back then.

People in that time were so easy to see, nothing changed, nothing grayed. It was such a simple universe back then, one that did not age.

He remembered the first time he saw her. A stuffed plushie held tightly in her hands. It was old, lame, pathetic.

But to them it was treasure.

A moogle toy.

Clenched in her hand, near her heart. If wealth were relative, then that was all the fortune she had in the world.

Their world.

That toy was her heart, and she was his.

_Her hair was stardust. He remembered running his hands through it._

He didn't even know what stardust was back then. The tangy mess he hugged through all those nights was a net of brown curls that cascaded down her back.

She still held the toy.

She still held his heart.

So safe. So calm.

_With hair like stardust._

It reflected the stars in her curls.

Even the brightest stars could not dim out her curls.

They fringed with dirt and speckles of whatever.

But he could hold it.

It was his portion of the Galaxy. Of Gaia. Of everything.

Her long lashes, her primrose ears. Everything to him was perfect.

Because he was a child. Maybe it was because he was young that he ignored the scabs, the coughing, and focused simply on her being. The imperfections had made perfection to his eyes. And with it he found a part. Too bad he didn't realize that it was a piece of his heart. And it was a piece of his heart that he would never find again. He could search, but as quickly as it came, it left again back into the stars. Back into the heavenly light.

She was a creature that wasn't of the earth. She flew, she leaped. She was nobody. But to him, she was the world.

Once he asked her for her name. She simply blushed and held the moogle doll closer to her chest. Closer to her heart.

And he questioned her no more.

He was curious, sure. But this experience was surreal, and in the dream state, it seemed alright to not know everything. Anyways, weren't the memories enough? He was young. He was a child. But he was no fool to realize that sometimes there are no answers in life. And there was no life to the answer of her name.

He never had to call on her. She was always there. But because he was so young back then, he didn't grasp the fact that she wouldn't be there forever. And when the cloud and the heart went to pick him up, he turned back to ask her again. Not for her name, but for a promise.

That they would meet again.

He turned.

He looked.

And saw nothing but the doll of the Moogle.

Facedown.

Disused by the numerous people that noticed nothing of its presence.

And then all time froze.

_She had left it there to be trampled on._

/

Marlene would ask him sometimes about what happened when he was gone. He didn't know what to tell her. It was almost like a fantasy, just a dream, some sort of magic realism. Everything seemed to stop at the point. There were dark parts of it surrounding the silver-haired men. But the peachy, star-syruped reality was what he remembered most.

A girl holding an old toy.

Them sitting on the ledge, whispering sweet nothings to each other.

Beneath the vanilla clouds, the swirling haze of the golden afternoon. Casually just the two of them in their own universe. It had only been their world. Even with the surrounding people it was just her and him.

Her and him.

Her and him.

To the others they were them.

_To each other, it was us._

And in that was her. And in her was him.

And he didn't know what to tell Marlene who always though of the both of them as one entity. Him and her. He didn't want to tell her otherwise.

She was still a child. She could be allowed to dream in that reality for a bit longer. For to him, there was only Denzel and Marlene. Two separate people. Two separate things.

There could be you and I, but never us.

That was special.

That was something that could only be hugged to the chest.

And thus, Marlene knew nothing.

/

Sometimes Marlene knew that she wasn't the one for him, no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise. She was beautiful with her bright doe eyes and pert, pink mouth. But none of it seemed right. She was too pretty, too fair, too clean.

He missed the hair like stardust.

Even though he realized stars were platinum gold and the word he was looking for was probably sawdust; he never thought otherwise now. Her hair was the stars to him.

It was the night sky, filled with the endless constellations that he could look up to in the evenings and dream about.

She could still be in his dreams where they would be together, her with her moogle doll close to her chest and he with his heart that was there to offer. And maybe they would look up into the stars and dream together.

It was alright to him that they remained anonymous to each other. Maybe that would ruin the reality that they had. It would ruin the magic of the day; it would ruin the question that he always held of if it were the real life or just a speck of fantasy.

It was the magic he needed now in the current world to keep going.

It was a corner of something bigger. But that corner was all he needed in his life, his world, his universe.

_It_ _was_ _purely_ _his_.

Yet even so, he was missing something.

He was missing something to make him whole.

And maybe his heart knew what he was yearning for, but he didn't. Therefore, he kissed Marlene that quiet morning in the kitchen where the scones were baking and chocolate was heating. It smelled sweet and of sugar.

But he hated sweets.

And he hated every moment of it when she handed him the hot chocolate and blueberry muffins that she had made earlier. In the buttery white universe, nothing seemed right.

He missed the stars, the night, the golden shine that emitted in the sunset in the later afternoons.

Nothing was special about that kiss.

And he knew he was searching for the demiguise hair and searching eyes.

He was supposed to be reaching for the stars, and here he was, kissing Marlene.

Everything about her were soft like bread, charming as caramel, and coated with vanilla. Marlene was comfort, first and foremost.

But he wasn't looking for comfort. He was searching for that calmness, whose idealistic state with the dreams and truths blended together in an opaque swirl.

Marlene was only affection. It would last until the day he died, but she wasn't part of his dreamscape and nothing she could or wanted to do would be able to change that.

He was looking for love.

/

He never found that toy.

So many years ago had it been since he stood at where he stood now. That time he hadn't turned back and urged Cloud to go home as quick as possible. He did not pick up the doll, its red nose turning a scorching grey from the incoming carnage of shoe soles. He wanted to leave the bloody scene as soon as possible.

He had turned back last time.

But he was going forward this time. And it was the time that mattered. He walked slowly, ignoring the passing stares. When he came here, he was a child that could not handle the scene before him. But now he was a man, someone who could deal with the reality in front of him.

And then he stopped.

It was where she had stood when he last saw her, when she bolted without any last words. Where she left like an illusion of the Far East, like some sort of oasis that only left the painful realization.

_In the form of an overused doll._

Except that doll was her heart.

And neither he nor she had reached out to save it.

Maybe this was how it was supposed to be, how it was supposed to turn out. There were no answers for everything in life like he had realized. But he really wished there was an answer to this. What this even was, he didn't know. There was so many fragments to the whole, so much little darting pieces of his memory, his self that were unable to be put together into words.

Time might be linear, but the memories made from it did not fall into a simple strand, they could not be strung together into a nice fitting little bad. Everything was a picture that had shattered. Sometimes pieces could be placed back together, while other times, the figments were too small to even have a glimpse of where they fit.

That was how he felt as he looked around, trying to seek out the answer to his questions. Beneath the vapid sky, he could not find what he was looking for. Was this how cruel it was? They may be under the same cloudless night, but not above the same place, the same time, the same universe?

He wished he picked up the moogle.

He wished he at least had proof that it was real.

He knew in his head, but he wanted to know in the world that what happened was not just his reality, but everyone else's as well.

With a sigh and a dull thrum of his heart, he turned back to where he once stood as a child. Oblivious, unchanging, and who still felt the stars in his hands.

And then he saw someone with their back to him.

Under the stars. Staring into the sky. With the stardust in her hair.

He ran back.

He had lost once.

But now he had been found.

This was his part of the world; sky, stars, universe, anything.

And then she turned to him.

And on her chest was a worn out toy. Its nose was falling off, and the white plush had turned a hideous grey.

But he didn't care.

'You left something here,' she said. Her eyes still searching like they used to be, except now, he realized, they had been searching for him. For her.

And he met her hands.

And together they held the doll.

A gentle ease swept through him like a storm.

This was real.

_This dream was real._

And here she was.

She hadn't returned the piece of his heart he had given to her so long ago; she had given her a corner of hers.

That would be his.

_In him was her. And in her was him._

/

End


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